On Monday morning, the Supreme Court put off, for a second time, the decision whether to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, but the core of the issue is unlikely to remain unresolved for long. The case is just one of a number of disputes in which small-business owners have refused to provide their usual services—cakes, flowers, photography, or marriage venues—to same-sex couples for their weddings, notwithstanding state or local laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The venders, usually sole proprietors, have argued that same-sex marriage offends their religious convictions, and that the anti-discrimination laws therefore violate their First Amendment rights, either by compelling them to engage in speech they don’t agree with—forcing them, in their attorneys’ words, to “honor,” “celebrate,” or “participate in” a same-sex marriage—or by interfering with their “free exercise of religion.”
“It’s a very hard question,” he said. “Doctrinally, it could go either way.” Eskridge has been active in gay-rights litigation for twenty-five years—he filed a marriage-equality case for a client in Washington, D.C., back in 1990—but he also believes that the legitimate rights of religious minorities have been neglected by judges.
After the incident at Masterpiece Cakeshop became public, another bakery provided Craig and Mullins with a cake, adorned with a rainbow, at no charge. But the affront gnawed at the couple, and they filed a discrimination charge with Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission that September. The commission brought a case against Phillips and his shop in May, 2013.
Yet, from the standpoint of individual liberty, a mammoth corporation, such as Woolworth’s, is different from a mom-and-pop business. The regulatory machinery has been hesitant to tell individuals how to behave on their own premises, no matter how repugnant their behavior may seem. To this day, as Eskridge observes, the federal employment-discrimination laws do not apply to businesses with fewer than fifteen employees, and housing-discrimination laws do not affect owner-occupied buildings with four units or fewer.
Also, a Woolworth’s luncheonette could not plausibly have claimed that serving a plate of hash browns was a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, and disputes like it, the sole proprietors often argue that their work contains a strong expressive element, subject to First Amendment protections. In Phillips’s briefs, for instance, his lawyers never describe him as a “baker” but always as a “cake artist,” arguing that a wedding cake “forms the centerpiece of a ritual in which the couple celebrates their marriage,” and that it “communicates this special celebratory message. Slicing a pizza or pot roast would not have the same effect.”
Judges have rejected these arguments so far, in part because Phillips’s refusal to serve Craig and Mullins was so categorical, and their conversation so brief. They never reached potentially relevant details such as what, if anything, would be inscribed on the cake.
Brayden Foster
“For all Phillips knew at the time,” an administrative-law judge ruled, in 2013—in a decision later adopted by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and upheld by the state appeals court—Craig and Mullins “may have wanted a nondescript cake suitable for consumption at any wedding.” The commission has conceded that Phillips could have lawfully declined to write messages that he disagreed with on the cake, and it has previously allowed bakers to refuse to adorn cakes with white-supremacist and anti-Muslim messages.
Gabriel Mitchell
you are free to serve or not serve someone, for ANY reason you wish
how the fuck is this debatable? you cant force them to do it
fucking stupid government loving faggots
Dominic Torres
Well if you are a lunch counter you must serve Black people.
Luis Turner
Only if it's not a Muslim bakery. Then we must respect their religion.
Owen Johnson
No ,the marketplace should sort things like this out. You should be able to put a WHITES ONLY sign up and run your business that way, and people who don't like it should avoid your store. This isn't someone's civil rights at issue, it's buying a cake. Go buy your fag cake somewhere else and tell all your fag friends. If your business fails from too many self imposed customer restrictions or from bad PR then that is on you.
Sebastian Williams
The biggest misconception about racism in the south was that it was primarily driven by the businesses - this is not the case. It was driven by laws I.E. the government. If it's a law that you have to have a separate eating area for black people or you get fined then that is not the business owner deciding anything.
Aaron Cox
>“It’s a very hard question,” no. no its not. only an selfish lgbt degenerates think it is.
you either have the government force everyone to be "nice" to faggots, or you just dont force anyone to do anything, and let them buy their fucking cake from someone else.
Elijah Cooper
Of course, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and ect bakeries should all have the same standard.
